Nugacity
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 futility; trifling talk or behaviour; drollery
"For the first time in his life of twenty-five years, Leigh Newcomber was seriously thinking of personal and practical matters; and this mental state being an untrained one, he jumped from impulse to impulse, and from reason to nugacity; and after a while reason and impulse became so commingled as to leave him in a bewildering maze of mental and moral incertitude."
Example
More examples"For the first time in his life of twenty-five years, Leigh Newcomber was seriously thinking of personal and practical matters; and this mental state being an untrained one, he jumped from impulse to impulse, and from reason to nugacity; and after a while reason and impulse became so commingled as to leave him in a bewildering maze of mental and moral incertitude."
Etymology
From Latin nūgācitās (“trifling”), from nūgāx, -itās. Further from nūgor, from nūgae.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.